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Titel: CHOMSKY v. KRIPKE, ROUND TWO:
METHODOLOGICAL COLLECTIVISM AND
EXPLANATORY ADEQUACY
Autor: Dan Barbiero, Silver Spring - USA
Dateiname: 11-2-96.TXT
Dateilänge: 51 KB
Erschienen in: Wittgenstein Studies 2/96, Datei: 11-2-96.TXT;
hrsg. von K.-O. Apel, N. Garver, B. McGuinness, P. Hacker,
R. Haller, W. Lütterfelds, G. Meggle, C. Nyíri, K. Puhl,
R. Raatzsch, T. Rentsch, J.G.F. Rothhaupt, J. Schulte,
U. Steinvorth, P. Stekeler-Weithofer, W. Vossenkuhl,
(3 1/2'' Diskette) ISSN 0943-5727.
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ABSTRACT
Given a situation in which someone appears to be (acts as if) he
or she is following a set of rules, what is the explanatory fact
of the matter? For Kripke, addressing this question in
WITTGENSTEIN ON RULES AND PRIVATE LANGUAGE (WRPL), the answer is
to be found in the collective fact of the agreements in judgment
characteristic of given communities. For Chomsky, responding to
Kripke in Knowledge of Language (KL), the answer is to be found
in the individual fact of those "states of the mind/brain that
enter into behavior" (KL 3). Like Chomsky, I do not think we can
come up with a satisfying explanation of behavior without
referring to states about (internal to) individuals. But I also
accept the notion, implicit in Kripke's argument, that observable
modes of behavior serve a function that is both exemplary and
normative. In order to explain how normative modes of behavior
can be assimilated and reproduced by individuals, I offer an
account of the observation and internalization of exemplary
performances.
0. INTRODUCTION
[1] The stimulus to the dispute between Chomsky and Kripke over
rule-following consists in a few footnoted comments in Kripke's
book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (WRPL 30n, 72n,
97n). In the course of those notes, Kripke questions the way in
which rule-following competence appears as an explanatory factor
in generative linguistics. A few years later, Chomsky devoted
much of Chapter 4 of his Knowledge of Language (KL) to a rebuttal
of Kripke's comments and a reaffirmation of the role of
psychological facts in the explanation and description of
behavior. Although on its surface the dispute seems fairly
local, Kripke's manner of raising the question, and Chomsky's
response to it, give evidence of a more fundamental disagreement
regarding the explanatory grounds of human behavior. The
disagreement, ultimately, is one between Chomsky's methodological
individualism and Kripke's methodological collectivism.
[2] Following Fred D'Agostino in Chomsky's System of Ideas (CSI
13-16), methodological individualism can be defined as the
position holding that an adequate description of behavioral
phenomena may require reference to collective facts, but that an
adequate, ultimate explanation of those phenomena will have to be
put in terms of facts about individuals. Conversely,
methodological collectivism holds that an adequate description of
behavioral phenomena may require reference to facts about
individuals -- their particular responses, for instance -- but
that any adequate, ultimate explanation of those phenomena must
be in terms of collective facts. This latter definition, which I
have adapted from D'Agostino's, may be characterized as "strong"
methodological collectivism. (By comparison, D'Agostino's
definition is of a "weak" version holding only that explanations
of behavior may require reference to collective facts in addition
to -- not instead of -- individual facts.) As we will see,
Kripke's solution to the rule-following problem, with its
emphasis on community-based "forms of life" and their constituent
agreements in judgment, represents a particularly strong variety
of methodological collectivism. (Chomsky's response to Kripke,
with its counter-emphasis on the attribution of certain
psychological facts to the apparently rule- following person, is
paradigmatic of a correspondingly strong methodological
individualism.)
[3] With this paper, I will not review in all its details the
entire debate between Chomsky and Kripke. Instead, I will look
critically at Kripke's proposed skeptical solution to the
skeptical paradox. My emphasis will be on his use of the notion
of an agreement in judgment as an explanatory device. Unlike
Chomsky, who argued that Kripke's account of apparent
rule-following was descriptively inadequate, I will argue that it
is in fact explanatorily inadequate, and that Kripke's strong
methodological collectivism is unable to provide an adequate
explanation of the phenomenon in question.
[4] Before beginning, however, I want to acknowledge that a
number of criticisms have been raised regarding Kripke's
interpretation of Wittgenstein's skepticism (see Wright p. 260
n. 8). Like Chomsky in KL, I will simply accept without
objection Kripke's presentation of the skeptical critique.
Because of these objections, however, I will -- unlike Chomsky --
direct my comments not to Wittgenstein's skeptical critique, but
to Kripke's. All references to the skeptical paradox and the
skeptical solution therefore should be understood as references
to Kripke's skeptical paradox and skeptical solution.
1. THE CRITIQUE OF RULES-BASED EXPLANATION
[5] Kripke introduces the skeptical paradox with this brief quote
from §201 of the PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS:
[T]his was our paradox : no course of action could be determined
by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to
accord with the rule. (WRPL 7)
[6] With this observation, Kripke asserts, Wittgenstein has
raised a new type of philosophical skepticism regarding what it
means to grasp a rule -- and indeed, what it is to make
meaningful use of language. The skeptic argues that there is no
fact about an individual that could constitute his or her meaning
that he or she is following rule R rather than rule R' (WRPL 39).
If one is to answer the skeptic, one must show what fact it is
about the mental state of the person apparently following rule R
that actually constitutes his or her following rule R rather than
rule R' (WRPL 11). The problem the skeptic raises, according to
Kripke, is a normative one in that there is nothing about that
person's present mental state that determines what he or she
ought to do in the future (WRPL 56): just because the person
thinks he or she is following rule R now is no guarantee that he
or she will follow rule R in future situations requiring the kind
of response typically generated by R.
[7] It might be argued that the normative question is answered
just in case the person follows the appropriate rule correctly.
But to this response Kripke objects that -- once again, if we are
to try to justify this (apparently) correct rule-following
strictly in terms of the person's mental state -- we would then
need to posit a rule for interpreting the original rule, and a
further rule for interpreting that rule, and so on ad infinitum
(WRPL 81). In short, there apparently is no non-regressible
internal fact about the purported rule-follower that accounts for
his or her following the given rule should an appropriate
situation come up in the future.
[8] In sum, then, the skeptical critique asks, "When a person's
behavior appears to indicate that he or she is following rule R,
how do we know that he or she is actually following rule R and
not some rule R' which would produce the same output given the
same input? Indeed, how does the person him- or herself know
that it is rule R and not rule R' that is now being followed,
even if at all appropriate times in the past he or she was in
fact following rule R?" Because we cannot answer this question
by looking at facts internal to a person, Kripke concludes, it is
the case that
[I]f one person is considered in isolation, the notion of a rule
guiding the person who adopts it can have no substantive
content." (WRPL 89, emphasis in the original)
[9] It is important to stop here to note what Kripke's argument
is not. It is not an argument about epistemology. It does not,
in other words, depend on the objection that the attribution of
rule- following (or, by extension, any attribution of a
determinate internal content to another person) is rendered
impossible by poor or insufficient evidence by which to justify
the particular attribution. The skeptical critique thus is not a
variant of Hume's critique of inductive inference, though Kripke
does note that Hume's critique is "analogous" to the skeptical
critique (WRPL 63). It is worth mentioning, in fact, that at the
epistemological level, nearly any explanatory device -- including
that offered by Kripke -- is vulnerable to charges of evidential
underdetermination. Inductive uncertainty cuts both ways here,
in other words; as Chomsky points out in his response to Kripke,
it bears on explanatory devices generally (KL 237).
[10] Nor does Kripke's argument represent a behaviorist attempt
to refute the reality of internal states generally. As Kripke
points out, his argument does not assume a dismissal of the
"inner," however that concept may be defined (WRPL 14, 44). To
be sure, Kripke does assert that hostility to the inner "is to be
argued as a conclusion" (WRPL 14). But this hostility does not
consist in denial of the existence of inner states; rather it
consists in the denial of their explanatory priority and force.
It is for that reason that Kripke frames his difference with
Chomsky's linguistics in terms of a reevaluated notion of
competence that would discard the idea that talk of internal
rule-following asserts facts or explains behavior (WRPL note 22
at 31).
[11] To repeat, then, the skeptical critique is directed toward
the normative problem Kripke sees growing out of efforts to trace
"a certain NEXUS from past to future" (WRPL 62), and it rejects
the suggestion that facts about an individual's internal states
can provide the grounding needed to settle the problem.
2. COLLECTIVE FACT AS SOLUTION
[12] After concluding that the normative problem of (apparent)
rule-following behavior cannot be solved by looking at facts
about the individual, Kripke offers a "skeptical solution."
[13] Kripke begins by stating that we must shift the focus of our
explanatory search beyond the individual and redirect it toward
"a wider community" (WRPL 89). If we do so, Kripke argues, we
will come to acknowledge that an individual can be said to have
mastered (or to possess) a given concept if his or her
"particular responses agree with those of the community" (WRPL
92). Accordingly, our attribution of concepts or rules to
individuals should call on "no special `state' of their minds,"
but should consist instead in our taking them into the
appropriate community provided they do not exclude themselves by
sufficiently deviant behavior (WRPL 95). Their behaviors and
responses must, in other words, accord with the appropriate
regularities observed among the other members of the community.
Kripke's main point here is that an individual's agreement with
the judgments or responses of the given community is "essential"
if the given rules and concepts are to be properly ascribed to
that person (WRPL 96). Perhaps most important of all, Kripke
states that this community-characterizing regularity of response
"must be taken as a brute fact" (WRPL 98).
[14] The two explicit claims Kripke's skeptical solution seems to
make regarding the explanation of apparent cases of
rule-following, then, are:
(1) the correct interpretation of a rule (or more generally,
possession of a concept or meaning) depends on conformity to the
appropriate behavioral regularities (or "agreements in judgment")
characteristic of a given community; and
(2) such agreements are not a matter of the same rules being
internalized by members of the given community but rather are a
matter of brute fact.
[15] There is a third claim that Kripke does not explicitly make,
but that I believe is implicit in any attempt to explain the
futural force of norms. This is:
3) because they are normative, agreements in judgment must
transcend any given instance of agreement.
[16] As we will see, this "transcendence condition," as I will
call it, is the pivot on which normative explanation balances,
and one with important implications for the viability of the
skeptical solution. I will explore this issue in depth at a
later point in this paper. For now, though, I will look at the
first two of Kripke's claims in turn.
2.1. The Agreement Condition
[17] The first claim -- that the correct interpretation of a rule
is a matter of agreement with the judgments of others -- states
what I will call the agreement condition. It is offered as an
alternative to the infinite regress that, as we have seen, Kripke
believes is entailed by the explanatory appeal to facts internal
to an individual. The agreement condition would relocate the
explanatory device from internal, individual states to the
collective phenomenon of behavioral regularity. Under the
agreement condition, Jones's announcing the sum "125" given the
inputs 68 and 57 would no longer be explained as the product of a
mental algorithm, but instead would be understood as a response
consistent with those of others in Jones's community. With this
move, Kripke replaces the explanatory turn to attributed mental
operations with a turn to Wittgenstein's concepts of "agreement
in judgment" and "forms of life."
[18] Kripke defines a form of life (Wittgenstein's LEBENSFORM) as
"a set of responses in which we agree, and the way they
interweave with our activities" (WRPL 96). The form of life is,
in other words, a set of relevant agreements in judgment proper
to a given group. The important point here is that forms of life
are a matter of sameness of behavior in that Kripke takes forms
of life to mean that "our actual community is (roughly) uniform
in its practices with respect to [a given operation such as]
addition" (WRPL 91). Kripke locates the center of gravity of
forms of life in something called "the community," understood as
a more-or-less uniform collective effect. If any instance of
behavior is to be explained or described, it therefore will have
to be explained or described in terms of its conformity to
behaviors observed throughout the community. The emphasis here
thus shifts from (attributed) facts internal to individuals to a
collective fact that is observed as a set of consistent or
regular effects enacted by members of a group.
[19] That is the primary sense in which the notion of forms of
life appears in WRPL. As Chomsky points out, Kripke employs the
term in a second sense as well. In this second sense, which
Chomsky characterizes as "metaphorical" (KL 232), Kripke concedes
that forms of life may encompass "highly species-specific
constraints" on behavior (WRPL note 77 at 97; also quoted in KL
232). Chomsky notes that acceptance of the notion of
species-specific constraints would in fact come down to a
corresponding acceptance of the "Cartesian conception of `other
minds'" (KL 234). This would effectively shift the criterion for
determining participation in a form of life from
community-relative behavioral regularities to an inference
regarding the makeup of others, i.e., that their use of language,
apparent exercise of will, creative performances, etc. are
evidence enough to attribute to them a mind like enough to one's
own as to confer recognition of personhood upon them. Note,
though, that Chomsky cautions that the attributions made on the
basis of such inferences are hypothetical, especially when
considered in the unscientific, everyday contexts in which they
typically are drawn, and that drawing them does not answer the
potential objection that there (still) is no internal fact of the
matter to consider in cases of apparent rule-following (KL 236).
It is, in effect, a working hypothesis along the lines of
Dennett's "intentional stance" -- something that serves well
under the ad hoc conditions of everyday life but may not, and
indeed even need not, hold up under scientific scrutiny. In any
event, as Huen acknowledges in his commentary, if we restrict
ourselves to what is given in Kripke's argument, then Chomsky is
correct to assert that the notion of form of life does indeed
encompass the notion of personhood implicit in the Cartesian
stance (Huen §1.2(2) "Reply").
2.2. The Explanatory Baseline Condition
[20] The second claim -- that the behavioral regularities
representing agreements in judgment are brute facts -- states
what I will call the explanatory baseline condition. By "brute
fact" I understand Kripke to mean "explanatory primitive."
[21] The explanatory baseline condition holds that the behavioral
regularities observable in given communities are irreducible as
explanatory devices. For the skeptical solution, in other words,
there is nothing to explain beyond the "brute fact" of agreement
of responses that distinguishes members of the community. Under
the explanatory baseline condition, reference to facts about
individuals other than that they do or do not conform to the
relevant behavioral regularities explains nothing of interest,
since the explanatory status of such facts would be derivative at
best, and misleading otherwise. There is (or is not) the fact of
agreement, and the explanatory chain terminates there.
[22] I earlier characterized Kripke's position as a variety of
strong methodological collectivism, and now we can see why. For
the skeptical solution demands not only that we factor in
collective phenomena (agreements in judgment) to account for
apparent rule-following behavior, but that we factor out any
explanatory reference to internal phenomena whatsoever. The
result is indeed the "hostility to the inner" that Kripke
promised, and this hostility is nothing if not emblematic of
strong methodological collectivism.
[23] But Kripke's strong stance is, I believe, the source of the
weakness of his position. For as I will show next, the skeptical
solution's insistence that agreements in judgment are explanatory
primitives -- its explanatory baseline condition, in other words
-- is inconsistent with the transcendence condition implicit in
any account of norms.
3. THE TRANSCENDENCE CONDITION
[24] I have claimed above that the third condition implicit in
the solution to the normative problem of apparent rule-following
is that agreements in judgment must transcend any given instance
in which they are embodied. I called this the "transcendence
condition." I would now like to look at what I mean by this, and
at what implications the transcendence condition carries for the
skeptical solution specifically and for methodological
collectivism generally.
[25] We can introduce the transcendence condition by posing the
following questions: Can agreements in judgment in fact be
reducible to the instances in which they are attributed? Or must
they, as norms, be transcendent in relation to any given
instances? Must they not form a basis -- a replicable basis --
on which our future agreements can agree? And if so, can they be
taken to be explanatory primitives, or do they prompt us to say
more -- about reproducibility, about causality, and ultimately,
about states of affairs of individual psychology? There will
indeed be more to say about these last three items, but for now
it is enough to say that the transcendence condition, simply put,
is this: In order to fulfill their normative function, agreements
in judgment must be applicable beyond any given instance of
agreement. They must, in other words, transcend any given
instance in which they are enacted.
3.1. Agreements in Judgment as Composites
[26] I would like to suggest that for purposes of analysis, an
agreement in judgment can be thought of as a composite phenomenon
made up of two components: a normative requirement or content,
and an exemplary embodiment. An agreement in judgment is thus
(1) a publicly observable event, action, or state of affairs that
(2) embodies certain information about how something should be
done.
[27] I believe that the first stipulation -- the public
observability condition, we might say -- is not only consistent
with Kripke's description of agreements in judgment, but even is
required by it. Indeed, the entire notion of a community
characterized by behavioral regularities would be incoherent
without the condition that these regularities be accorded some
kind of public status. This is underlined by the notion that
such regularities can somehow be tested. If I read Kripke
correctly, such tests would somehow have to put the individual
response before the community or its representative(s), thus
rendering the former publicly accessible and therefore subject to
judgment.
[28] The public observability condition would further entail that
the agreement in judgment have the status of a concrete example.
Under this interpretation, an agreement in judgment would be a
normative MODEL the function of which is to constrain or regulate
behavior. As a model, an agreement in judgment would constitute
a certain pattern in conformity to which members of the relevant
group will attempt to conduct themselves in current or future
situations. Such a pattern -- and it is here that we would find
the information referred to in the second stipulation -- would
serve as a regulating constraint on behavior or response. But in
order to do so -- in order that its regulatory function should
have any force -- it will have to be reproducible across similar
cases. Put as explicitly as possible, an agreement in judgment
-- that is, a relevant, replicable precedent functioning as a
standard against which present and future activity can be
measured -- must, by definition, be applicable, mutatis mutandis,
in future situations. It must, by virtue of its normative
content, project a certain influence from present to future.
This requires that its normative content not be reducible to any
given instances in which it is embodied. It will, in other
words, have to overflow the particular situation in which it is
enacted.
3.2. The Separability of Normative Content
[29] What I am getting at here is that for purposes of
explanation, there must be a certain separability of content and
embodiment. To hold instead that normative contents are not
separable -- that is, that they are embodied in the act and that
such embodiment is a primitive -- is to deny de facto that they
are or can be applicable to other, future situations. For if
they were inseparable from the particular instances in which they
are embodied, they would not be anything other than contingent on
a particular situation. And a purely immanent model cannot
provide a basis for explaining how such norms can regulate
behavior in a multiplicity of instances.
[30] The separability of normative contents from the instances of
their enactments becomes particularly important when the former
are understood to underwrite competence. Consider that a
competent actor is someone who can apply skills (or in more
Kripkean terms, perhaps, conforms to the appropriate constraints)
in diverse yet relevantly similar situations. Such skills, and
the norms that help constitute them, represent a capacity that
must generate the correct responses whenever called upon. For
this reason, I think it is important to keep in mind that
agreements in judgment make sense only if they are understood to
represent potentialities that can enter into the production of
behavior. But I will look at this causal function in more detail
later.
[31] A word of qualification is in order here. The normative
requirement of a particular agreement may be applicable or
relevant only in relatively narrow, well-delineated situations.
This is because many competencies are applicable only in the
context of more or less well-defined practical domains -- that
is, fields of work, intellectual or professional disciplines,
organized undertakings, etc., that are distinguished by
particular methods, objects, materials, and perhaps established
institutions as well. (Alternately, it is possible to think of a
practical domain as representing a particular form of life to
which a particular set of agreements in judgment are
appropriate.)
[32] Upon analysis, then, agreements in judgment reveal
themselves to consist of reproducible normative requirements
embodied in particular examples. With this understanding in
place, we can begin to show how their normative force can carry
over to future instances. We can begin to do so by looking at
how agreements can be reproduced. This is, I believe, the
crucial problem, and one in relation to which the skeptical
solution breaks down.
4. THE PROBLEM OF REPRODUCTION
[33] The problem of explaining how behavioral regularities are
reproduced (the problem of reproduction, for short) is the
problem of accounting for how behavioral regularities -- Kripke's
agreements in judgment -- can be enacted and re-enacted by
diverse members of the same community in diverse yet
appropriately similar situations. The problem of reproduction is
essentially this: Given that we are to characterize people's
actions in terms of agreements in judgment or regularities of
behavior, how can we account for the fact that members of a group
do seem to instantiate behaviors that, taken in the aggregate,
exhibit a certain consistency or regularity? How can it be that
the behavior exhibited by person A in a given situation is also
reasonably approximated by person B in a relevantly similar
situation? Put another way, if we accept someone into the
community on the basis of his or her agreement in judgment in a
given area, how is it that we can get him or her to agree, and
thus to be eligible to be considered a part of the community, in
the first place? How, in other words, can he or she reproduce
the responses that others would produce under the appropriate
conditions? The problem of reproduction thus is the problem of
explaining how different individuals can in fact come to the
agreements in response that are supposed to undergird instances
of (apparent) rule-following behavior.
[34] It seems to me that the skeptical solution, if it is to be a
solution, must be able to answer the questions posed above. What
this comes down to is that the skeptical solution must explain,
and not simply describe, the individual fact of Jones's supposed
conformity to group responses. How did Jones get so that he
responds with "125" when asked to sum 68 and 57? An answer to
this question would build an explanatory bridge, as it were, to
get us from the individual fact -- that Jones is behaving in a
way consistent with other members of his or her group given the
same situation -- to the collective fact, which is that members
of Jones's group tend to act in the same manner given the proper
circumstances. The skeptical solution must, then, tell us WHY
Jones's behavior can reproduce the regularities observed among
his group.
[35] But it does not. The explanatory baseline condition, with
its claim that agreement is a brute fact, effectively rules the
problem out of bounds. But it seems to me that this is begging a
question that must be answered; referring to behavioral
regularities as primitive simply takes for granted that which
must be explained, and that won't do here. If we are to find an
answer, we must look instead to the transcendence condition and
its implications.
[36] The problem of reproduction is, in effect, the other side of
the transcendence condition. For if the transcendence condition
holds that an agreement in judgment implies a normative content
that is not reducible to any given instances in which it is
enacted, then the problem of reproduction can be seen as
concerned with how transcendent normative contents can be
communicated to, and consequently internalized by, individuals.
Implicit in this view is an understanding of normative contents
as having a causal role in the production of behavior, and it is
to a consideration of this causal role that I now turn.
4.1 Agreements in Judgment as Causes of Behavior
[37] No direct and explicit causal claims are made by Kripke on
behalf of forms of life and their constituent agreements in
judgment. On the other hand, one might plausibly argue (and I
believe it is the case) that the skeptical solution does carry
causal implications. For it would seem that a normative
constraint would carry a causal force entering into the
production of a given behavior. Put another way:
(1) Members of Group A share certain behavioral regularities
(manifest certain agreements in judgment);
(2) Members of Group A do so on the basis of the appropriate
normative constraints;
Therefore
(3) Such normative constraints must (somehow) enter into the
production of the behaviors in question.
[38] Given points (1) and (2), I think point (3) follows, with
the result that normative requirements must be thought of as
causal constituents of instances of behavior. My reasoning is
that (1) there has to be some way of accounting for how different
individuals can produce similar responses in similar
circumstances, given that (2) they are guided by norms that
transcend any given instance of their being put to use. This
must be because (3) the content of these norms is a constituent
of the states entering into the production of the behaviors in
question. What we need to show, then, is how these norms CAUSE
people to act in a certain way.
5. EMULATIVE ACQUISITION
[39] I would like to suggest one process that can account for how
at least some behavioral regularities (i.e., agreements in
judgment) can be reproduced. This process is one of emulative
acquisition. Emulation, basically, is a process through which
one acts by copying the actions of another. This may seem like a
simple enough proposition, but the mechanisms underlying it are
not. In fact the chain joining the exemplary agreement in
judgment to its reproduction in a new situation can be traced
through no less than the following four phases:
1) Demonstration
2) Observation
3) Internalization
4) Causation
5.1. Demonstration and Observation
[40] Emulative acquisition begins when one person observes
another person demonstrating a skill or activity of some sort.
This second person serves as a model, and his or her activity
functions as a structured, exemplary response that the observer
subsequently will try to reproduce.
[41] I stated earlier that a model can be thought of as a
publicly observable pattern. Consider now how the activity
comprising a given performance configures the observer's stimulus
field as a certain pattern. This pattern is made up of a focus
-- consisting of the most important aspects of the activity --
and a periphery. Much of the organization of the stimulus field
into focus and periphery probably can be attributed to the
observer's cognitive- perceptual processes, among which
variations of attentiveness most likely play a prominent
role. The resulting selection provides the basis for a
generalized conceptualization made up of features that can be
expected to be relatively invariant across cases.
[42] And this is where the transcendence condition comes in.
What the transcendence condition requires is generalization, and
that is what the observer's perceptual-cognitive processes would
serve to bring about. For absent purely contingent aspects, the
generalized conceptualization would embody a content that, once
internalized, in principle could be brought to bear in diverse
yet relevantly similar situations, as needed.
[43] As suggested above, such generalization probably is in large
part a function of the observer's attentiveness. But it is
important to bear in mind that the attentive selection of
observed features is as much a matter of the recognition of
mind-independent facts as it is a (loosely speaking) mental act
of construction. In fact it seems reasonable to believe that
there is a large extent to which the configuration of the
stimulus field serves to pre-select the salient features that
will impinge upon the observer. An action taking place within a
given setting would constitute a focal point to which the
observer's attention would be drawn; it would count as a salient
feature of the general environmental configuration in which it is
located. The rest of the setting would stand as a kind of
backdrop against which the main, attention-drawing event would
take place. It is precisely this prestructuring of the stimulus
field that would provide the basis for ignoring or otherwise
leaving out any purely contingent aspects of the activity.
5.2. Internalization
[44] The observer of an exemplary performance, then, confronts
the stimulus field as a given pattern structured by salient
features. Observers may internalize these patterns by way of the
brain's pattern-recognizing functions, which give rise to
correlated internal patterns, or content states (see Churchland
chapter 9 and Purves chapter 8) within the observer. These
correlated content states, which most likely are "stored" in the
brain as synaptic weights disposing the brain to instantiate a
given pattern in the event of occurrence of the appropriate
internal or external stimuli, function as conceptual contents, or
mental prototypes, which contain information relevant to
replicating the activity. Such contents or prototypes in effect
encode generalized information about the observed performance.
[45] In claiming that internal content states are correlated to
the external features to which they are related, I am not
claiming that our mental states mirror the external environment.
What I am claiming instead is that our internal states are
related to, and in some complex way dependent upon, the features
of the objects, events, and states of affairs they are directed
toward. I am assuming that it is the function of our content
states to (somehow) provide a reasonably accurate and reliable
map of the external conditions they represent, and this requires
that they be constrained in significant ways by the objects,
events, and states of affairs represented. It does not follow
from this assumption that there must be a one-to-one, causal and
(therefore) infallible relation between external features and
internal contents. Rather, the mechanism of representation is
assumed to be a complex one in which multiple perceptual
modalities must be synthesized, short term memory must function
properly, and allowances made for proprioceptive and other
internal stimuli. The result of such a process would be an
internal state correlated to the situation it is "about" on the
basis of general features inhering in or derived from that
situation. This is all I mean by "internalization."
[46] It would be in such internal states that normative contents
would be embodied. Consider that the action demonstrated for the
purpose of learning shows not only how something is done, but how
it OUGHT to be done. There would be, in other words, a normative
dimension bundled into the more purely mechanical information
imparted by the demonstration. For analytical purposes one might
be able to separate out this normative aspect from the purely
mechanical aspect, but it is difficult to see how this would in
fact be accomplished by the observer -- granting that he or she
would even want to make such a separation. Certainly he or she
would assume that, all things being equal, what he or she is
seeing demonstrated is what he or she ought to be doing in the
given situation.
5.3. Causation
[47] What the attentive observer acquires (internalizes) in
watching the exemplary performance, then, is a content state
carrying information on the normative as well as the mechanical
aspects of the activity observed. This internal state further
serves to play a causal role in response, given the proper
circumstances.
[48] Content states of the sort I am considering play a causal
role in behavior by virtue of the fact that they are
representational structures that guide the performances to which
they are correlated. As Fred Dretske has suggested (Dretske 94),
a content state is a cause of an instance of behavior to the
extent that the behavior is undertaken on the basis of what the
content state represents. The content state underwrites the
behavior and, by virtue of what it represents, serves to ensure
that a performance or activity takes the shape it does when it
does. Let me amplify this point.
[49] I have been using the expression "content state" as a
general term to stand for an internal state that includes
normative as well as cognitive or doxastic content. But whether
we are considering internal states carrying information about
what one thinks is the case or about what one thinks one ought to
do, the causal relation to the performance is the essentially the
same. The constraints contained in norms, no less than the
environmental information contained in beliefs, provide reasons
why a performance takes one form rather than another. One will
act in a certain way not only because one takes the situation to
be a certain way (rather than another), but because one thinks
one ought to act in a certain way rather than in another. In
narrowing the range of possible responses, in offering a kind of
template for the response selected, a normative content plays a
determining role in fitting the performance to its surrounding
environment.
[50] In the foregoing sections, I have attempted to provide one
account of how agreements in judgment could be reproduced. To be
sure, that account is conjectural, and is restricted to one
simple type of learning. But it does attempt to explain the
highly problematic matter of how behavioral regularities can be
reproduced by individual members of a group. I believe something
like it must be operating if we are to explain any of a number of
behavioral regularities characterizing given social groups; in
all likelihood, the model must be expanded to account for other
forms of learning, including those with explicit reliance on and
transmission of rules.
[51] It is natural to ask here whether emulative internalization,
with its emphasis on experiential learning, could account for
language learning. I do not claim that it can. Thus I am not
attempting here to offer an empirical alternative to Chomsky's
rationalist theory of language acquisition. I do think, however,
that something like the process I have described can and probably
does account for some aspects of vocabulary acquisition either
directly (through, e.g., ostension) or indirectly (through the
acquisition of cognitive prototypes underwriting linguistic
reference). Such experientially-derived learning of these
aspects of language is not ruled out by Chomsky. But the
(limited) purpose of my introducing this account has not been to
postulate a theory of language learning, but rather to provide
the explanation for normative reproduction that Kripke's account
lacks, but nonetheless seems to call for.
[52] The general point, then, is that if we want to try to
explain how it is that people come to agree, we cannot keep the
explanatory baseline condition, which holds that the behavioral
regularities that "are" agreements in judgment stand as
explanatory primitives. On the contrary, explaining reproduction
means making reference to underlying states within individuals --
something that is not compatible with the explanatory baseline
condition.
[53] There is one other matter that I think deserves attention.
5.4. Normative Judgments versus Dispositions to Act
[54] In a perceptive move, Kripke rules out a dispositional
response to the skeptical paradox because, he states, a
dispositional account of behavior is descriptive and does not
engage the question of normative constraints on behavior (WRPL
37). Kripke is right on the mark with this. But I would add
something here: the difference between the dispositional account,
which tells us what will happen given certain conditions, and the
normative account, which tells us what ought to happen given
certain conditions, is the evaluative and/or discriminative
moment that characterizes the latter.
[55] This is to say that when it is a matter of applying or
conforming to norms, we must at some point determine what
response would be relevant, given the circumstances. This I
believe is an essential aspect of normative behavior: one must
decide (or choose, or even acquiesce in) what is appropriate,
i.e., what one ought to do. There is, in other words, a
discretionary aspect to norm- following. I would argue that this
is an essential feature of normatively informed behavior, and
that it is only by virtue of it that we can speak coherently of
agreements in judgment as involving judgment at all. But we will
miss this discretionary aspect entirely if we do not make
reference to internal states.
[56] It seems to me, in fact, that bringing given internal
contents to bear in certain situations is the essence of
judgment. Thus it would seem that if we are to attempt to
explain judgments, we would at some crucial point have to talk
about facts within individuals. For that reason, it is striking
to see the expression "agreement in judgment" in the context of
an argument that would all but eliminate recourse to
psychological explanation.
6. METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM, NONETHELESS
[57] In offering a position informed by emulative internalization
to account for behavioral regularities, I have shifted the
primary focus of explanation away from collective facts and back
to individual states. In effect, I have inverted Kripke's
inversion of explanatory criteria. In doing so, I have, of
course, rejected Kripke's methodological collectivism in favor of
an account that represents a variety of methodological
individualism. But I believe that if we do not perform this
inversion of Kripke's inversion, we will find ourselves in a
position just as untenable as that which Kripke rejects, and for
the same reasons. That is to say that, with the acceptance of
agreements in judgment (or behavioral regularities) as
explanatory, brute primitives, we fall into a skeptical paradox
similar to the one Kripke claims to find in explanations based on
facts about states within individuals.
[58] This paradox is brought into sharp relief by the
reproduction problem. In effect, without somehow accounting for
the reproduction of agreement in any appropriate case, we cannot
account for how a present agreement, embodied in a present
performance, can determine that a future performance will embody
the appropriate agreement. The same problematic, normative NEXUS
from past or present to future that Kripke cited when faced with
explanation based on internal facts is not eliminated when
explanatory devices are inverted, but rather is displaced.
Unless we can come up with an account of the way diverse
individuals in diverse yet relevantly similar (or appropriate)
circumstances can replicate the "correct" agreement in judgment,
we become subject to the same criticisms Kripke leveled at
individualistic accounts: appealing to the idea that one's
agreeing in judgment in the appropriate situation is an
explanatory primitive may be "irrefutable," but it leaves the
allegedly primitive state "mysterious" (WRPL 51).
[59] Like Chomsky, then, I do not think we can come up with a
satisfying explanation of behavior -- whether considered
individually or as a given regularity across cases -- without
referring to states about (internal to) individuals. At the same
time, I accept Kripke's conviction that observable modes of
behavior serve to ground the habits attributable to any given
individual.
[60] But without a convincing (or indeed, any) account of how
these habits or agreements can be reproduced, we are left asking
the same question the skeptical critic directed to toward
rule-following explanations: how can one account for the future
normative force of past or present agreements? How, in other
words, can one ensure that, given the appropriate conditions, the
community will be in agreement in the future? As I have argued
above, in order to function normatively, the behavioral
regularities we take as exemplary must contain a transcendent
normative content that can play a causal role in the future
production of behavior. And as I also have argued, this
situation means that we must, in explaining them, refer
ultimately to facts about individuals and their internal states.
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